He looked at me in surprise.
Bertha said to me, “Keep your damn mouth shut. You’ve got troubles of your own.”
I pushed the empty coffee cup across at Bertha and said, “Guess you’ll have to do the honors.”
Bertha refilled the coffee cup.
Sellers watched her pouring in thick yellow cream and said, “I can’t get cream any more.”
“It’s too bad about you,” Bertha said sarcastically.
The telephone rang.
Sellers didn’t even wait for Bertha to move toward it. He spilled coffee over the edge of my cup into the saucer as he made for the living room.
Bertha called after him, said, “Just like a bull in a China shop, a big flat-foot cop trying to act civilized. Just a minute, lover, I’ll fix it.”
She went over to the sink and emptied the saucer, put more coffee in the cup, brought it back and said, “Hold your hat when the big ape sits down again. He’ll probably pull the damn table out by the roots this time. What’s the matter? Didn’t Bertha cook the bacon right?”
I nodded, said, “What I ate tasted fine.”
“Well, eat the rest of it.”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It’s been like that lately. I’ll be hungry, then just a few mouthfuls of food, and my stomach turns. I couldn’t get another bite down to save myself. This is the most I’ve eaten for a long time. I was really hungry tonight.”
“Poor kid,” Bertha said sympathetically, sitting down at the corner place.
I sipped the coffee. Bertha’s little greedy eyes regarded me with a motherly solicitude.
After a while, Sergeant Sellers came walking back into the room. He was frowning, and so absent-minded he’d forgotten to take his drink along and pour in fresh whisky.
Bertha grabbed up my cup and saucer and held it above the table while Sellers sat down. Then she put it back on the table and said, “Well, what about it?”
Sellers said, “It’s okay. A couple of guys went out in a prowl car and shook this guy down. He says Donald came out and asked him questions about an automobile accident. By God, that’s once you fooled me.”
“How?” I asked.
“When you said it was something that didn’t have anything to do with this case. I’d have bet eight weeks salary against a thin plugged dime that that was a runaround. But the guy says you were asking him about an automobile accident that took place quite a while ago. Then he says a girl came out and claimed to be a reporter for one of the newspapers and started asking him questions about the same accident. He rang up the newspaper she claimed to be representing and found it was an act she was putting on, so he chased her out.”
Bertha looked at me with eyes that were just a little apprehensive.
Sellers went on, “Okay, the way I dope it out, Donald was a little careless, but he isn’t exactly a fool. He had this man Cullingdon spotted, went out to talk with him. The jane tagged Donald out there. Donald wasn’t so damn dumb. He knew she was tailing him. He waited until she went in and then he pulled a fast one on her. Cullingdon says he went to the window and looked out to see if he could get the license number of the girl’s car. He saw her get into her car, then Donald climbed out of his car, walked over and raised his hat to the girl. Donald was evidently telling her off. Then he climbed in the car and drove away with her. Cullingdon said Donald was careful to walk around the front of the car when he went around to get in, keeping a hand on it all the time so the girl couldn’t give him the slip without a chance to hop the running board. Cullingdon thinks Donald is a pretty smart egg.”
“He is,” Bertha said.
“So Cullingdon sort of kept an eye on things,” he said. “He admits that he went out to Donald’s car and looked at the registration to check up on Donald. Donald was telling him the truth. He’d given him his right name and told him what he was there for. That’s a point in Donald’s favor.”
I sipped coffee and didn’t say anything.
“The car was parked out there for quite a while, Cullingdon says. He looked out every once in a while and it was still there. Then he looked out and it was gone. He didn’t see Donald come and get it. Now then, if Donald can tell us...”
I opened my wallet and took out the taxicab slip that I keep for my expense account voucher. I handed it to Sellers and said, “That’s the taxicab that took me out there.”
“Where did you pick it up?” Sellers asked.
“Somewhere on Seventh Street,” I said casually. “I can’t tell just where.”
Sellers heaved a sigh and said, “Well, I guess this will do it all right. Someone planted the weapon in that car while it was parked out there in front of Cullingdon’s. Now who the hell could have done that?”
I said, “That’s a job for the police department. I’m going home and get some shut-eye.”
Sellers said, “Your friend Cullingdon appreciates the fact that you told him the truth, Donald. And incidentally, it’s a darn good thing, from the standpoint of the police department, that you did. Cullingdon said to tell you that the amount of the settlement was seventeen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five dollars, and that the case, he thinks, was handled on a contingency basis, and her lawyers got either a third or a half.”
I said, “That’s nice of him.”
Sellers frowned and said, “The hell of it is that you were investigating another matter. I can’t get over that.”
Bertha said, “We’re a big agency. We have a lot of irons in the fire.”
Sellers looked at her thoughtfully and didn’t say anything.
“Well,” I said, “I’m going home and get some sleep. I’m all in.”
“You poor kid, you look it,” Bertha said.
Sellers followed me to the door with Bertha. He said, “After all, Lam, I should have known better. You wouldn’t have done anything so dumb as to have found that weapon and then dumped it in the back of the automobile.”
“Any fingerprints on it?” Bertha asked almost too casually.
“Just prints of the two guys that picked it up and looked it all over before they knew what it was,” Sellers said. “Any murderer who has sense enough to toss a murder weapon into the back of somebody’s automobile certainly has sense enough to wipe off the handle.”
“But the head of it?” Bertha asked.
“Bloodstains and a couple of hairs that showed up under the microscope. It’s the murder weapon, all right.”
“Thanks for the food,” I told Bertha.
Bertha’s tone was maternally tender. “You’re entirely welcome, lover. Now you get to sleep and get a good night’s rest and don’t let anything bother you. After all, we’re not mixed up in this murder case and we’re not going to get mixed up in it. And we’ve done two hundred dollars worth of work in that other matter.”
“Good night,” I said.
Sellers and Bertha chimed in a chorus. “Good night.”
Both voices were friendly.
10
The three blocks back to my apartment house seemed to be three miles. I went down into the garage and grinned at the attendant. “I’m going to have to take my car out again,” I said.
He looked at the two-bits I handed him as though it was an insult rather than a tip, then moved a couple of cars and jerked his thumb toward the agency car. “There it is.”
I got in, started the motor and eased it out of the garage. I ran down the street for half a dozen blocks and pulled into the curb and parked. I waited for about five minutes then started up, gave it the gun, went around the corner fast, and did a couple of figure eights around blocks.
No one was following me.
A fog had drifted in from the ocean and now it was beginning to settle. The air had turned cold, and the damp chill went clean through to my bones. I’d be all right for a while and then the weakness would grip me and my blood, thinned from the tropics and weakened by bugs, would turn cold, and I’d shiver and shake the way I did when the old malarial chills would get me. But these spells only lasted for a minute or two and then I’d be myself again. It was just weakness.